Letters: Give them an inch
I know that New 杏吧原创 crusades for metric units (‘The longbow’s deadly
secrets’, 5 June, and Letters, 3 July), but have you no sense of history at
all ? Was not a longbow arrow a cloth-yard long, that is 37 inches? How can
you measure so noble an artefact in ‘millimetres’ – the very word sounds
thin, weak and cringing beside the inch, which took its being from the width
of a craftsman’s thumb pressed flat upon the workbench. That’s the unit for
longbows.
John Edwards
Goostrey, Cheshire
Letters: Clock on a trip
Rupert Gareboie’s ‘Godalming effect’ may have a simpler explanation than a
time warp (Letters, 3 July).
Adjoining Godalming Station is Westbrook Mill, mentioned in the Domesday
Book. After some eight centuries of using its water wheel to grind corn, the
mill became a leather factory. The scrapings of the raw skins, used tanbark
and other residues were dumped along the foot of the railway embankment.
In 1952 the site changed hands and became a chemical factory making, among
its many products, ergometrine extracted from ergot. The process workers,
the former leather workers, continued to put biodegradable residues on the
same site as before.
Among the ergot residues was lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), at that time
of no value to the firm. LSD is now well known to have hallucinatory effects
on the brain, an organ of complex electronic mechanisms.
Is it possible that undegraded LSD could have wafted into the electronics of
the clock and given it hallucinations?
N. H. Philip
London
Letters: Clock on a trip
The Godalming effect is felt further up the line, at Guildford and at
Waterloo. At Guildford, the clock on the front of the new station building
took a year or so to settle down and show the right time. It is still
slightly out, but not alarmingly so. At Waterloo, the clock in the new
International Terminal, opened with such fanfare recently, was running 20
minutes later after the first few days’ operation, and was then stopped by
British Rail, presumably to prevent further embarrassment.
J. R. Nichols
Guildford, Surrey
Letters: Weather wise
The Met. Office’s claim for 85 per cent accuracy in its forecasts (Forum,
26 June) is rather disappointing. I find I can achieve a comparable degree
of accuracy with one simple rule: tomorrow’s weather will be like today’s.
Since a pattern of weather generally lasts for several days before changing,
this rule provides a high percentage success rate.
W. McGregor
Strasbourg, France
Letters: Shoppers' delight
Urban noise mapping, as observed recently in France by your contributor Tara
Patel (Technology, 29 May) has also been tried here at home. Twenty-five
years ago, our pilot Historic Towns Report, Chester – A Study in
Conservation, featured not only a pioneer map of this kind, but some useful
findings about the control of noise in this and other towns. Noise, it
was realised, is echoed and redoubled in streets between walls of buildings,
but can also be diverted and made more tolerable by screening to create
noise-free shadows and areas of relative quiet.
Since our research, much has been done to ameliorate not only the noise
problem in Chester, but with it, other pollution effects of traffic as well
as danger to pedestrians, in a programme of increased pedestrianisation in
the central area. This is now a delight for shoppers on foot, with its buzz
of human conversation, blending happily with the sound of human footfalls,
and of the occasional street musician. Noise mapping can be a valuable tool
for planners.
Donald Insall
London
Letters: Kind to crocs
Angus Nicoll and Mary Braham, commenting on the recent injury to game ranger
Oliver Schiebe, criticised the harpoon method of capturing saltwater
crocodiles in Australia (Letters, 19 June). They implied that it is inhumane
and that he should be using Kofron’s technique.
Despite its name, the harpoon method for capturing saltwater crocodiles
bears no resemblance to harpooning whales. The detachable harpoon head for
crocodiles has two barbs only 15 to 20 millimetres long, which just
penetrate the crocodile’s thick hide. There is no injury to the crocodile
beyond what amounts to pin pricks. The small head of the harpoon is attached
to a stout cord, with which the crocodile is pulled to the side of the boat
and/or to shore. The sole purpose of the harpoon, therefore, is to attach a
line to the crocodile, so its jaws can be secured.
The harpoon technique allows a go-and-get strategy aimed at capturing a
particular saltwater crocodile. In comparison, Kofron’s baited mouth snare
employs a sit-and-wait strategy for random captures of Nile crocodiles. Each
method has its place, depending upon the situation, and both offer
crocodiles a humane capture.
Gordon Grigg and Christopher Kofron
The University of Queensland
Brisbane, Australia
Letters: Two-way process
Carol Dent’s impassioned plea (Forum, 3 July) that the Science and
Engineering Research Council and the universities should turn their
attention to serving ‘industry and society at large’ rather than ‘research
disciplines’ has served one of the purposes she must have intended – to send
shivers down the spine of academics like myself.
Let’s say that what she asks for has come about. The academic community has
become ‘the servant of research councils, whose masters will be industry and
society at large’. This assumes that industry and society have a clear
portfolio of research which needs to be done, in order, I imagine, to create
wealth for all.
But there is no such portfolio. Undoubtedly, different companies have
different needs which require research. But it is naive to believe that
commercial success depends solely on the satisfaction of such immediate
needs.
Free research provides a substrate from which industry can feed. Success
depends on the ability of industry to exploit this and the imagination with
which the exploitation is done. The relationship between the research
substrate and industry goes both ways – wealth-creating applications advance
research and freedom to do research advances wealth-creating applications.
The SERC needs to be there to sustain this freedom as best it can.
I have just returned from an investigative visit to Japan (partly
instigated by the SERC) and the most striking thing that I noticed is the
way in which this two-way process is seen as key to wealth creation. The
skill lies in integrating the applied and the free-ranging by the creation
of new centres where the two can coexist and where researcher mobility is
seen as the answer to technology transfer. In no way can this be seen as a
process where fundamental research is ‘subservient’ to industry – it is a
case of industry unashamedly exploiting the free research while at the same
time being instrumental in increasing its freedom. I find it hard to believe
that the Dent model could really compete with this.
Igor Aleksander
Imperial College London
Letters: Waste of time
I believe it is about time we all realised what has happened to our country
and educational establishment. I feel so burdened by this that I cannot
bottle it up any longer.
I graduated in July 1991 at Sussex University, with a BSc Honours in
Experimental Psychology. I enjoyed my three years at Sussex: possibly it
was the best time of my life. However, a year before graduation, there was
talk of this looming recession, the one we all became so familiar with.
I suspected that getting a degree would not guarantee a favourable career,
but I did not have any inkling that it would be impossible. The only success
I have had (if you can call it that) was a position of psychology
technician, and this only because it wasn’t advertised. I was made redundant
three months later. I now work as the manager of a T-shirt shop.
I estimate that I must have sent 200 applications to various institutions
for jobs fairly relevant to my qualification. I am staggered and bewildered
that I did not receive an invite to one interview. On top of this, I
cannot even add to my qualification, because it is virtually impossible to
obtain funding.
Though I am grateful to the government and Sussex University for my
education, I am left with only one conclusion: my degree course, and a
large proportion of other students’, was a waste of time and a waste of
taxpayer’s money (at an estimated 拢12 000 per student).
It is clear that a degree is now an obsolete qualification for many people.
Surely the only sensible move would be to close down 50 per cent of the
universities in this country and spend the money on projects that are
relevant to society. I am sure the taxpayer would agree with me.
Alan Mills
Brighton, Sussex
Letters: Cold cars
For something like three decades I have been following developments in
electric vehicles. Your report on the ‘supercar’ (Technology, 26 June)
fails, as all other recent and many similar reports, to specify how the
vehicle(s) are heated. I assume no user could tolerate any car without some
form of heating. The implications should be obvious.
Hybrids with 250 cc engines are hardly likely to have sufficient waste heat
for the purpose. Smiths Industries at one time had a paraffin heater for
commercial electric vehicles, which were adaptable no doubt for cars.
Could you not in future please ensure reports on electric vehicles cover
this point: heated or unheated. It is important.
Norman Jenkins
Farnham, Surrey
Letters: Weasel phrase
I found it nearly impossible to read Justin Russell’s otherwise interesting
piece on self-injury (‘No way to treat a body’, 3 July) because of his use
of the phrase ‘learning disability’ for ‘mental handicap’.
This is a weasel phrase, and effectively a lie.
‘Learning disability’ describes a quite common set of problems specific to
learning. Until it was hijacked by a small but vocal part of the mental
handicap lobby, it implied nothing further.
The cases described, such as ‘James’, have far more than ‘learning
disabilities.’ They have profound mental disorders which, for whatever
reason, have not been overcome, and in some cases have institutionalised
them for life.
So a sentence like ‘clinical psychologists based at the Institute of
Psychiatry, London, discovered 616 people with learning disabilities who had
inflicted ‘nonaccidental damage’ on themselves in the previous four months’
is nonsense and indeed deceptive. Or does it really mean that the main
distinguishing characteristic of these people was that they had trouble in
school?
Our language is too full of jargon; you yourselves are often writing against
it. This is bad jargon. You should resist it.
Peter Ceresole
London
Letters: Slugging slugs
There are better pesticide-free ways of keeping slugs from the garden than
scooping them up at night with a dessert spoon (Forum, 10 July).
In The Book of Visions (Virgin, 1993), which I edited, Robert Hart describes
his Forest Garden, where slugs are kept at bay through keeping the soil
predominantly alkaline (lime, which tickles their sensitive tummies, which
they don’t like, wood-ash, soot and liquid seaweed), using strong-smelling
mints, tansy and balm which they also dislike, and protecting seedlings and
transplants with a herbal mulch consisting of aromatic plants and conifer
twigs spread between the rows.
Nicholas Albery
Institute for Social Inventions
London
* * *
See also ‘The killing fields (and gardens) – an ‘organic’ alternative’ by
Jeremy Cherfas in ‘Slugs, snails and scientists’ tales’, New 杏吧原创, 22
July 1988 – Ed